Modern large-scale call center and other support operations may involve the remote deployment of a number of interconnected resources including interactive voice response (IVR) farms, automatic call distributors (ACDs), customer service representative (CSRs) workstations along with other hardware, software, personnel and other assets. In a number of conventional call center architectures, various destination premises may located in geographically separated sites or locations, so that one set of IVR farms may be located in one city while a set of ACDs distributing calls to CSRs may be located in another city, or in another region or country. The efficient operation of those network resources, including call transfers and the capture and transport of call data, therefore becomes significant to the call center or other operator.
In a typical scenario, a toll-free (800) or other call may be received over a long distance network, such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or a cellular network, at or in a call center. Often the call may be first directed to an automated call response resource such as an interactive voice response (IVR) unit or farm. The IVR unit may for example present the caller with a voice menu which invites the user to enter account numbers or other caller entered digits (CED), voice recognition responses or other inputs. Upon completion of the voice menu script, for some percentage of callers the actions or responses required by the caller's inquiry may require the call to be transferred to another destination, such as an automatic call distributor (ACD) located at other premises.
The ACD or other premises logic may then transfer the call to one of a group of customer service representatives (CSRs), for instance at workstations equipped with database or other tools to service the caller's inquiry. Call data such as account numbers, user names or IDs or other data may also be linked with the call and transported to the ultimate CSR workstation or other destination, using various techniques. The CSR can then respond to the caller's inquiry with pertinent account or other data at hand.
However, in conventional architectures the network connections which bridge the original call dialed in through the long distance network to the IVR, ACD and other resources are generally kept open and connected to maintain, service and complete the call during the entire duration of the call. Intermediate connections may be maintained even after, for instance, the IVR unit is finished interacting with the caller. The call is simply routed from the long distance network, to an IVR or other first resource, then further connected or bridged to the ACD or next premise equipment in daisy-chain fashion. As a consequence, switches and ports which switch the call may be kept occupied by the bridged call from end to end, tying up network capacity while the call remains in process. In addition, some leased lines or other voice or data connections may be kept open while the sequence of connections is maintained, causing per-minute, per-connection or other charges to accumulate over the entire set of bridged connections while the call remains active.
Other problems and inefficiencies in toll-free and other call distribution schemes exist.